The receipt which I have just found, turns out to be the numbered and
printed form. They seem to attach some special importance to its
discovery. You have had experience, when you were in the Swiss house, of
their way of doing business. Can you guess what object they have in
view?"
Obenreizer offered a suggestion.
"Suppose I examine the receipt?" he said.
"Are you ill?" asked Vendale, startled by the change in his face, which
now showed itself plainly for the first time. "Pray go to the fire. You
seem to be shivering--I hope you are not going to be ill?"
"Not I!" said Obenreizer. "Perhaps I have caught cold. Your English
climate might have spared an admirer of your English institutions. Let
me look at the receipt."
Vendale opened the iron chamber. Obenreizer took a chair, and drew it
close to the fire. He held both hands over the flames. "Let me look at
the receipt," he repeated, eagerly, as Vendale reappeared with the paper
in his hand. At the same moment a porter entered the room with a fresh
supply of coals. Vendale told him to make a good fire. The man obeyed
the order with a disastrous alacrity. As he stepped forward and raised
the scuttle, his foot caught in a fold of the rug, and he discharged his
entire cargo of coals into the grate. The result was an instant
smothering of the flame, and the production of a stream of yellow smoke,
without a visible morsel of fire to account for it.
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